The bay area as a whole needs to be looked at when talking about San Jose. You do not need to live in San Jose. The traffic is not like So Cal. It can be bad, but not like down there. You are 30-60 mins from the beach (Santa Cruz), 2-3 hrs from the snow (Lake Taho or Reno, NV), if you want diversity check out SF. You can see any of the major sports, Sharks, 49ers, Raiders, Giants, A's, Warriors, etc, there is the SF symphony, the Oakland Ballet, there are major museum's within an hours drive. If you want to getaway there is always Monterrey! The Bay Area has much to offer unless you really like the unrelenting heat of So Cal, as the average temp is right around 68-70 degrees most of the year!
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Originally Posted by essendoubleop
I'm from northwest Washington State so imagine a blend of Seattle and Vancouver. I'm used to laid-back, intelligent, liberal, generous people and an ever-changing climate and variety of environmental landscapes. I've only recently fully appreciated how lucky I am to live in such a great place and would look for a number of similar characteristics in my next area of residency.
That being said, I LOVE the sun and doing basically every sort of outdoor, physical recreation activity. I'd imagine I'd get more opportunities for that in the San Jose area, while Long Beach is a giant sunny beach surrounded by an endless urban jungle. Of course I love going to sporting events (49ers and Raiders vs. ....... in L.A. for football), music concerts (more opportunities in Long Beach I'm sure), not so much into malls (money dumps for a grad student is not a good combo), am trying to get into BIOtech (though not necessarily the Silicon Valley computer tech), but I think my recreation activities will be limited during my time in graduate school.
Ultimately, I am more concerned with the practicals of living in either area such as living expenses, finding jobs, and general decency of people.
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Guess I should have read the entire thread before commenting. UC Santa Cruz is currently building a Bio-Medical building. As for Concerts, there are multiple places for these, the SJ Event center, The Shark Tank, The Oakland Coliseum, Shoreline Amphitheater, Concord Pavilion, etc. We have our share of malls, but they tend to be a lot smaller, except for the Great Mall.